CHICOPEE — This year is the 125th anniversary of the publication of Chicopee native Edward Bellamy's best selling Utopian novel "Looking Backward."

In the waning years of America's Gilded Age, the man from Chicopee proposed a radical new resource distribution formula for the world's wealthiest nation.

In 1888, the American nation was on the verge of becoming the world's most productive economic engine. Fueling the country's emergence was a disturbing dependence on cheap immigrant labor.

Bellamy, the obvious product of Anglo-Saxon Puritan stock, was upset by the massive influx of central and southern European newcomers into the industrial cities of the Northeast. Far from being a "nativist," Bellamy, as a young man, traveled extensively in Europe.

Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward" is, 125 years after it was written, the most widely read and influential Utopian novel ever to be written by an American.

He served as a traveling companion for his wealthy cousins. While visiting the cities of Germany, he observed first hand the urban poverty wrought by the powerful industrial cartels. Now, to his chagrin, the system was being imported to the United States.

Bellamy's novel is to this day the most widely read and most influential utopian novel ever to be written by an American. Within a decade following its publication, the book sold more than a half million hardbound copies in the United States and a quarter million copies in Great Britain.

Editions in all major languages made it one of the most widely read novels of all time.

"Looking Backward" was a literary sensation. Quickly, Bellamy's ideology of "nationalism" was influencing every level of American politics.

The foundation of nationalism (Bellamy preferred this label to other terms of social organization such as socialism or communism) was the belief that the nation itself, not profit-mongering corporations, should wield complete control of industrial power and distribution of wealth.

The nationalist ideal was the fuel of Bellamy Clubs, which were formed at home and abroad in the 1890s to put the novel's ideas into practice.

The organization's national headquarters were on Winter Street in Boston's Back Bay.

In December, business reporter Jim Kinney, writing in The Republican, reported that, according to Springfield-based dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster, the word "socialism" saw the largest number of spikes in online web searches and, along with "capitalism," was picked as one of its words of the year. According to the publisher, the word socialism refers to the government ownership and administration of production and distribution of goods. Capitalism refers to private or corporate ownership of the tools used to make and transport products whose prices are set by competition on the free market.

California in the 1930s had the political climate of a banana republic. In 1934, the state's Democratic Party primary nominated Upton Sinclair for governor. At the height of the Great Depression, the issue was unemployment, and the California candidate had a plan.

Social reformer and novelist Upton Sinclair, shown on the cover of a pamphlet detailing his "EPIC" plan to end poverty in California, based his campaign for governor of California on the Utopian ideas of Edward Bellamy.Photo courtesy Edward Bellamy Memorial Association

Sinclair's plan to end poverty in California (EPIC) was straight from the pages of "Looking Backward." The socialist-turned-Democrat might be able to win in a state seething with discontent.

As if it weren't frightening enough, Sinclair promised, if elected, to put the state in the movie business. The state-produced movies would be shown in state-ran theaters with state orchestras.

The response from Hollywood would doom the Sinclair campaign. The studio heads announced they would move to Florida. They backed the Republican candidate with one of the dirtiest campaigns ever waged against a candidate, and one that would transform America's electoral process forever, giving rise to a modern all-powerful media campaign, in which packagers, image makers and political commercials have a profound impact on public opinion. Sinclair's 12-point plan also hinted at doing away with banks and money and the creation of a government credit card.

In Edward Bellamy's year 2000, Dr. Leete explained the new economic system to Julian West: "A system of direct distribution from national storehouses took the place of trade, and for this money was unnecessary."

West wanted to know how this distribution was managed? "On the simplest possible plan. A credit card is issued to the individual's share at the public storehouse. Perhaps you would like to see what our credit cards are like?"

In 1888, Edward Bellamy's best-seller introduced time traveler Julian West to a socialist Utopia, where crime, war , personal animosity and want are non-existent. Equality of the sexes is a fact of life. In short, a messianic state of brotherly love is in effect.

Dr. Leete hands Julian West the pasteboard credit card. "'You observe," he pursued as I was curiously examining the piece of pasteboard he gave me, 'that this card is issued for a certain number of dollars. We kept the old word but not the substance. The term, as we use it, answers to no real thing, but merely serves as an algebraical symbol for comparing the values of products with one another. For this purpose they are priced in dollars and cents, just as in your day. The value I procure on this card is checked off by the clerk, who pricks out of these tiers of squares the price of what I order.'"

In August, Bongkeun Kwon, of the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) in Korea, visited the Bellamy homestead in Chicopee with a television crew. They were producing a documentary about the declining use of currency in Asia. Most of the homestead footage ended up on the cutting floor, but in the end Edward Bellamy invented the credit card.